As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option is an Information Handling System (IHS). An IHS generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements may vary between different applications, IHSs may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in IHSs allow for IHSs to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as supporting cloud services, financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, global communications, etc. In addition, IHSs may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
An individual IHS may include various types of server components. An IHS may include one or blade server components, where each blade server is housed within a chassis that allows the blade server to be stacked within a rack enclosure. Alternatively or in addition, an IHS may include one or more rack server components that can be stacked directly within a rack enclosure. Alternatively or in addition, an IHS may also include one or more tower server components that need not be stacked or otherwise housed in a rack enclosure, but may be adapted for such implementations. In certain IHSs, the server components, whether blade servers, rack servers or tower servers, may include an array of drive bays, in which storage devices can be inserted. Such arrays of storage devices can be used to implement storage solutions that share or replicate data across the array of storage devices. In certain configurations, the individual storage devices can be removed from a drive bay of a server while the server and the IHS remain running.
The storage devices connected to the server components may be utilized for mass storage functions, but in some scenarios, the storage devices may have a bootable operating system installed. Removing a storage device from a server component can be problematic in situations where the IHS or a related system has booted an operating system that is running on the removed storage device. Even if the IHS is not presently booted from a running operating system, removal of a storage device containing the bootable operating system may still result in a system malfunction at a later time. When retiring or repurposing the server component, identifying storage devices with a bootable operating system may facilitate reusing those storage devices without requiring reinstallation of the operating system.